Joey Skaggs - The Art of the Prank

February 8, 2011December 15, 2023

Portofess Goes High Tech

Moderator’s note: Joey Skaggs brought “Religion on the move for people on the go” with his mobile confessional booth, Portofess, in 1992. Now confessing has gone high tech.

Submitted by Alex Case:

Just when you think it can’t get any weirder… I think we should counter with I-dulgence: a new way to pay for your sins, as a small amount of money is regularly deducted from your credit card or bank account…

Catholic church gives blessing to iPhone app
BBC News
8 February 2011

The Catholic Church has approved an iPhone app that helps guide worshippers through confession.

The Confession program has gone on sale through iTunes for £1.19 ($1.99).

Described as “the perfect aid for every penitent”, it offers users tips and guidelines to help them with the sacrament.

Now senior church officials in both the UK and US have given it their seal of approval, in what is thought to be a first.

The app takes users through the sacrament – in which Catholics admit their wrongdoings – and allows them to keep track of their sins.

It also allows them to examine their conscience based on personalised factors such as age, sex and marital status – but it is not intended to replace traditional confession entirely.

Instead, it encourages users to understand their actions and then visit their priest for absolution.

Read the rest of this article here.

September 7, 2010December 15, 2023

Submitted by Dave Camp, saying “Prescient again”? Dave is referring to a hoax Joey Skaggs did in 1981 called “Metamorphosis“. Skaggs said he was an entomologist who had discovered cures for all of mankind’s common ailments such as colds, flus, acne, anemia and menstrual cramps, by extracting and eating cockroach hormones. Is history repeating itself? Or, was Skaggs really onto something?

Here’s the article:

Cockroach Brains May Be a Source of Antibiotics, Research Says
by Simeon Bennett
Bloomberg
September 6, 2010

Cockroach brains may be a source of new antibiotics capable of killing deadly drug-resistant bacteria, according to research that suggests the germ-spreading pests may be good for something after all.

Insects such as cockroaches have a defense mechanism against bacteria, a “logical” development from living in unhygienic conditions, research from the U.K.”s University of Nottingham showed. Tissues from the brains and nervous systems of cockroaches and locusts killed more than 90 percent of MRSA and E. coli without damaging human cells, scientists said. Continue reading “A Cockroach Cure? Again?”

July 9, 2010May 13, 2026

Alice Neel Remembered

Update, July 31, 2010: Mystery solved! Contributor Sara Jones found an article in the June/July issue of Art in America about the Italian artist at whose exhibition I met Alice Neel. His name is Piero Gilardi.

[March 6, 2023 Update about Piero Gilardi]

From Joey Skaggs, editor, July 9, 2010:

An Alice Neel retrospective has been organized by White Chapel Gallery in Houston and is currently traveling in Europe. Neel (1900-1984) was a portrait painter. A portrait she painted of me in the mid 60s was recently exhibited at La Louver Gallery in Venice, CA. Peter Frank reviewed the show in Huffington Post on July 7, 2010.

Seeing the portrait again brought back memories of meeting her in 1967. It was one of those incredible encounters.

I was having an exhibition of my abstract landscape paintings in mid-town New York and decided to walk up and down 57th street visiting other galleries. I ended up in a gallery whose name I can’t recall featuring an Italian sculptor whose name I also don’t remember. The artist carved elaborate environments from giant rolls of foam and air brushed them to look realistic. They were rolls of artificial reality. One was a giant landscape hanging from the wall and draping onto the floor, simulating a creek bed. There was also a watermelon patch and a tomato garden. I found myself standing next to a little old lady (I being in my twenties and she being in her sixties, she was a little old lady to me). We both were staring at the creek and then looked at each other. She said “Why don’t we take off our shoes and walk on it. I wonder what it feels like.” She kicked off her shoes, I pulled off my cowboy boots and we stood on it together, squishing the foam under our toes. She said “I could just see them rolling this out over Vietnam.” I said, “Yeah, covering the dead bodies.” She said, “What do you do, my dear?” I said, “I’m an artist. As a matter of fact, I’m having an exhibition of my work right now just a few blocks away.” She said, “I’m an artist too! Let’s go see your work.” And we did.

She said she’d like me to pose for her, that she’d like to do a really big painting, 6 feet tall, full figure. I agreed and she asked me to pick up the stretchers and the canvas. She never reimbursed me, but I figured, okay, she’s a little old lady”¦ And that began my friendship with Alice Neel. Although I’ve seen pictures, I haven’t seen the actual painting for decades. Somewhere along the line, not sure if by her or someone else, my last name Skaggs was spelled with a “c” instead of a “k”.

For fun I thought I’d pose with my twenty-something self…

June 8, 2010December 15, 2023

Improv Everywhere: The Tourist Lane

This project is derivative of Banksy’s Fat Lane, which created a walking lane for obese people, which was itself derivative of Joey Skaggs’ 1984 Walk Right! project, in which a group of street vigilantes enforced 66 rules of street etiquette for New Yorkers, but New Yorkers apparently still don’t know how to walk right…

From Charlie Todd of Improv Everywhere:

The Tourist Lane

For our latest mission, we created separate walking lanes for tourists and New Yorkers on a Fifth Avenue sidewalk. Department of Transportation “employees” were on hand to enforce the new rules and ask pedestrians for their feedback on the initiative.

For video and more photos, visit Improv Everywhere.

Idea by: Jeff Greenspan
Shot by: Matt Adams, Jason Eppink, and Keith Haskel
Photography: Katie Sokoler and Scott Beale
DOT Workers: Dan Black, Don Fanelli, Jeff Greenspan, Cody Lindquist

May 18, 2010December 15, 2023

Virginity for Sale?

Is it a hoax or is it porn? Joey Skaggs is interviewed for AOL News:

Hoax Experts Cast Doubt on Virgin Reality Show
by David Moye
AOLNews.com
May 17, 2010

Four Australian virgins are allegedly in Las Vegas to sell off their virginity to the highest bidder, but hoax experts say the only ones getting screwed are the people who believe it’s real.

Australian documentary filmmaker Justin Sisely is getting international publicity for planning a reality show in which men and women will auction their virginity to the highest bidders — but hoax experts are casting doubt on the whole enterprise.

After a yearlong audition process in Australia, Sisely says he has found six virgins — five men and one woman — willing to broadcast their first-times on prime time for about $17,700 each, as well as 90 percent of their sale price. Two of those virgins, Ben Smith and “Veronica Peach,” are reportedly in Nevada after the Australian government threatened to hit Sisely with prostitution charges if he filmed the show in his home country.

Now Sisely is claiming the auction will take place in a Nevada brothel, which will receive the remaining 10 percent of the sale prices.

Although bids supposedly will be placed online before the final auction, experts in both hoaxes and the sex industry doubt the whole affair is real or will ever happen.

Joey Skaggs, who has a 40-year-career of playing pranks on the media, says Sisely’s purported documentary sounds like a big media hoax — and not a good one at that. Continue reading “Virginity for Sale?”